Basics of Arduino

What is Arduino?

Arduino is a micro-controller board. It has 14 digital input-output pins from which 6 can be used as PWM output and 6 analog inputs. It consists of 16 MHz ceramic resonators, USB port, power jack, ISP connector, reset button. We can connect it to a computer with USB cable or power it with AC/DC adaptor battery to get started.

What can we do with Arduino?
Arduino can be used to read sensors. It can control things like motors and lights. It allows you to upload programs to this board which can then interact with things in the real world. By using it, you can make devices which respond and react. Basically, if there is something that is in anyway controlled by electricity, the Arduino can interface with it in some manner and even if it is not controlled by electricity, you can still use things like motors and electromagnets to interface with it.

Types of Arduinos and its features:
The version which is commonly used is Arduino UNO. It is especially designed circuit board for programming and prototyping with ATMEL micro controller. They are relatively cheap and can be plugged straight into a computer’s USB port.

Key features of Arduino UNO:
1. It is an open source design. Large community of people using and troubleshooting it makes it easier for you to debug.
2. It has easy USB interface. Chip plugs directly into USB port and registers on your computer as a virtual serial port.
3. It has a very convenient power management and built-in voltage regulation. It can connect external power source up to 12V and it will regulate it to 5V and 3.3V.
4. It is easy to find and dirt-cheap micro-controller brain. It has timers, PWM pins, external and internal interrupts and multiple sleep modes.
5. It has 16 MHz clock which makes it not the speediest around but fast enough for most applications.
6. It has 32 KB of flash memory for storing your code.
7. It has 13 digital pins and 6 analog pins. These pins allow you to connect external hardware to your Arduino. These pins are the keys for extending your computer capability of the Arduino into the real world.
8. It has ICSP connector for bypassing the USB port and interfacing the Arduino directly as a serial device.
9. It has on-board LED connected to pin 13 for fast and easy debugging of code.
10. It has a reset button to reset the program. It is necessary to reboot and load your chip in case of corruption.